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FASCIST YOGA with Stewart Home + Sascha Aurora Akhtar
September 25 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm BST
Join us for a discussion with Stewart Home and Sascha Aurora Akhtar about Stewart’s latest book, Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order In Wellness.
The practice of yoga promises peace, self-realisation and release, thanks to the power of its ‘mystic’ Indian origins. But what if this is just hype? In Fascist Yoga, Stewart Home sweeps away the half-truths to tell a new origin story of the world’s first modern yogi – a Californian escapologist who added some Hindu fairy dust to gym and circus exercises.
Ever since, the world of yoga has been full of grifters, occultists and white supremacists, all out to exploit and recruit via the medium of exercise. From cult leaders to brainwashed followers, TV celebrities and fake gurus, the story of yoga has involved some of the strangest currents of humanity.
Today, the COVID pandemic has activated elements within the modern yoga movement to espouse far-right conspiracies, and QAnon’s fascist political programmes mirror some of yoga’s key early proponents.
In this new exposé, Stewart Home shows that nothing is sacred.
Bios
Stewart Home is a legend of counterculture. He is an artist, filmmaker, pamphleteer, art historian and activist, and the author of countless pulp fictions, including most recently Art School Orgy and She’s My Witch. He regularly performs to audiences across the world and recently started making headstand paintings with the canvas placed above him and brushes held in his toes. He was born and lives in London.
Sascha Aurora Akhtar was born in Pakistan. Since that was obviously a mistake, she fled as soon as possible to an environment where women could be wacky. What was born was a hydra. Each head a different medium, via which to transmit her wyrd and whimsical witchery. She graduated from Bennington College in 1999. She has written all too many poems, out of which some have managed to become titled collections. Her films include Ana-el-Haqq (2002) and The Sea and Medusa (2006). In 2003 she received a fellowship from the Creative Writing department at UMASS Amherst where she worked with James Tate, Sabina Murray and Peter Gizzi. In 2005 and 2006, she performed in Butoh-based dance pieces at Chisenhale Dance Space in London. She recently was part of a year-long initiative by the International Museum of Women in San Francisco, exhibiting work by women artists from around the globe. Her photographic work was on display at Gallery 27 on Cork Street in September 2007 and an exhibition of her works is upcoming in Spring 2008 at The Commune in Karachi, Pakistan. She spends her time in London and Pakistan and is the co-producer of the successful La Langoustine Est Morte reading series.